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taryneast comments on A Sense That More Is Possible - Less Wrong
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Sure thing - that can probably be easily re-phrased to "deliberately doing something with the intent to hurt a person (without their consent) and thereby to gain advantage over them"
Breakups do not fit the above as you are not generally breaking up with a person for the express purpose of hurting them - it's kind of collateral damage, and leads to a better situation for both in the long run.
This is often not true. Look at all the people who have killed themselves over a breakup.
So is hurting a woman in order to have sex with her. Hurting people is rarely a terminal goal.
In general, as a consequentialist I find it hard to care about intent. It seems you're trying to invent a new deontological rule, but I don't understand why it should be adopted.
Nope - collateral damage is damage done unintentionally. "hurting a woman in order to have sex with her" is a pretty good example of intentional damage.
My definition is pretty clear about which is the unethical of these two.
You are using the word incorrectly. This is independent of what behavior is ethically acceptable.
All damage that is incidental to the primary purpose of an action is collateral damage.
Additional note: Calling Bob collateral damage when you run him over so that you don't kill lots of children is a correct usage.
You and I disagree about whether this is collateral damage, not because we have a different definition of collateral damage, but because we disagree about whether there is intent in this situation.
If the end-goal is to have sex with a woman, and you choose to hurt this woman to gain it, then her being hurt is part of the plan - and is thus intentional. It is an important sub-goal of the main plan, which is what makes it intentional.
You could have instead chosen to buy her flowers, flatter her, or to choose a different woman (one that does not need hurting for you to gain the end-goal of sex). The presence of acceptable alternatives is one reason why I consider this situation to not be a case of mere collateral damage, but of intent.
So, I realize this is completely tangential to your main point, but: if the army launches an attack against a military target that happens to be located in a civilian neighborhood, knowing perfectly well as they do so that civilians are going to be killed in the process, I'd consider that a pretty good example of both collateral and intentional damage.
Yep - I agree. It's a classic case that covers both ends of the spectrum.
It also only tends to trip up people that fall for the fallacy of the excluded middle ;)
In this case, it matches my pattern of "intentional damage" and therefore ethically questionable, in my opinion.
That's not to say that if more evidence came up eg information about how it's the only alternative, or if the "greater good" outweighed the downsides... it might still be the only preferable choice... but in any case, I'd take a strong interest in the ethics involved before making the decision if I were put in that position.
Huh.
I agree with you here, but I now have no idea what you meant by "collateral damage is damage done unintentionally."
"unintentionally" in my head means literally "done with intent".
Ie, if I decide "I hate Joe Bloggs" and then I get in my car, drive until I see him walking alongside the road and intentionally choose to jump the curb and run him over - then I would say that I intentionally killed Joe Bloggs because that is the outcome that I intended to happen.
however - if instead, I get in my car, and am driving down the road, my brakes fail and I see a whole classful of schoolchildren crossing the road... and my only option to not kill them is to jump the curb, which I do... but Joe Bloggs happens to be there and I see that he's there and choose one death over many...
Well - I would consider that him being killed was unintentional. The main intent of my action was not "I want Joe Bloggs dead" but "I want not to kill the schoolchildren". It was unintentional to my main aim.
Does that make sense?
It makes sense on its own but it contradicts what you said earlier about the cases cousin_it suggested.
It does seem to - which made me think about exactly which cases I'd consider one or the other. So here goes again... :)
In the example above - I am trying avoid causing hurt to the children - therefore if I hurt one person because it's the only way to avoid hurting multiple people, it is ethically-difficult... but, in my head, ok in the end because the re is no other option available. If you had the opportunity to choose even less collateral damage (eg slamming on the brakes) you would do so.
In the case of intentionally hurting one woman in order to gain advantage for onself - this does not apply. Especially because you are intentionally hurting another person to help onseself - the sex is the eventual goal... but the hurt is chosen as a necessary step for that goal - there are no other means being considered.
In the case of breaking up with a person - you are intending that you and they not be with one another anymore - you are not hurting them with the intent to hurt them - therefore the "collateral damage" is unintentional. - Also the expectation is that you will both be better off apart (on average). Yes, there are rare cases where an unstable person will not recover... but on average I'd say that if you were trying to have a relationship with the kind of person that was suicidal - you might be better off not being with them... that is obviously an ethical dilemma that will never be covered by a cut-and-dried rule.... but I can safely say that in my head - if I were to leave somebody whom I suspected to be suicidal - I'd be leaving them, not with the intent that they choose to commit suicide - therefore the harm would be unintentional (also, I'd make sure to call somebody that could help them with their suicidal tendencies... but that's by-the-by).
As to the case where we're deliberately choosing to kill people that are located in a civilian location... I'd consider it ethically questionable, because you are deliberately choosing to kill people... not just to avoid killing other people (as in the schoolchildren case).
There is intent to kill - even if these particular people are not part of the main intent. I'd consider it less ethically questionable if they found a way to try to kill these targets without damage to the surrounding areas.
... in fact, in thinking more, I think a big differene is the actual intent itself. Are you trying to Gain by the hurt, or to Reduce a Bad Thing?
I think it's more ok to hurt to reduce a worse Bad Thing, than it is to simply Gain something that you'd otherwise not have.
This really does seem unnecessarily complicated.
Let's assume for the sake of discussion that more pain is bad, and less pain is good. (You already seem to be assuming this, which is fine, I just want to make it explicit.)
Most of these examples are cases of evaluating which available option results in less pain, and endorsing that option. This seems straightforward enough given that assumption.
The example of breaking up with someone is not clearly a case of that, which sounds like the reason you tie yourself in knots trying to account for it.
So, OK... let me approach that example from another direction. If I suffer mildly by staying with my partner, and my partner suffers massively by my leaving him, and the only rule we have is "more suffering is worse than less suffering," then it follows that I should stay with my partner.
Would you endorse that conclusion?
If not, would you therefore agree that we need more than just that one rule?
I'm going to assume you mean "without," here.
It's not how I use the word, but yes, it makes sense. Thanks for clarifying.
That said, to go back to the original example... if you consider "hurting a woman in order to have sex with her" a pretty good example of intentional damage.... it follows that the main aim in that example is not to have sex, but to cause pain?
Oh - and in any case - thanks for asking these questions. It's helping me clear up what's in my head at least a little. I appreciate not only that you are asking - but also that you're asking in a way that is quite... erm approachable? not-off-putting perhaps? :)
You're welcome.
Yep, good catch. bad (ok, non-existent) proof-reading on my part. :)
And you're right - nutting it out a bit more has made me think more about what I consider intentional or not - and also what the main intent is or not.
In the case of "hurting a woman to have sex" - you are deliberately choosing to hurt her to gain. I think the difference is that the intentionally "hurting a woman to have sex" is more pre-meditated than having no choice but to jump the curb and kill one person instead of many.
Goals build on other goals. Your end-goal is to have sex... but if you make it your temporary goal to reduce her self-esteem to make the main goal more likely, then you are intending her to be hurt, in order to further your goal.
In the case of, say, jumping the curb to avoid children your main goal is avoiding children... jumping the curb is not something you choose as a sub-goal... if there were any other way - you'd choose that instead. It's not a goal in and of itself, it's your last possible resort - not your best possible choice.
Anyway - not sure I'm being very clear here - either with you, or in my head. This is the kind of thing that is difficult to extract from one's emotions. I know there's been some psychological research on this kind of thing - and AFA my fuzzy memory serves - it's fairly common to see a moral difference between the "intending to hurt somebody to further a goal" vs "unintentionally having to choose to hurt somebody to help something worse not happen" situation.
Edit: Looks like PhilGoetz mentions it in his comment about trolley problems
I don't think there is a clear dividing line here - because there a confounding of what's "moral/ethical" with whats "intentional".. I think there are two things tangled together that are difficult to separate. I get the feeling that I'm trying to define both at once.
In my head now is that "intentional is generally non-ethical" "unintentional is generally less unethical... but it depends on the main goal and whether or not you are trying to gain, or reduce Bad Things..." :)
OK, I think I'm kinda following this.
I agree with you that this discussion is unhelpfully confounding discussions of intention with discussions of right action, and it also seems to be mingling both with a deontological/consequentialist question.
For my own part, I would say that if I have the intention to perform an act and subsequently perform that act, the act was intentional. If I perform the act knowing that certain consequences are likely, and those consequences occur, then the consequences were intentional.
If the consequences are good ones and I believed at the time that I performed the act that those consequences were good ones, then the resulting good was also intentional.
All of this is completely separate from the question of what acts are good and what acts aren't and how we tell the difference.
One question that might help you clarify: Fundamentally, is the divide in your head "more interested in taking steps to promote the side effect or in taking steps to avoid it" or "seems to consider the side effect acceptable"?
I think the example of a drunk driver might be an accessible one. Your goal is to get yourself and your car home; your intention is not to hit anyone. In fact, you'd be extremely sad if you hit someone, and would be willing to take some steps to avoid doing so. You drive anyway.
Do you put the risky driving in your intentional category? If you think intentionality means "treats it as a thing to seek rather than to avoid where convenient", the risk is unintentional. If you think intentionality means "seems to consider the side effect acceptable", then the risk is intentional because you weren't willing to sober up, skip drinking, or take a cab.
There is already a common deontological rule that one should adopt appropriate caution. "Appropriate caution" allows one to break up with people under most circumstances, but my limited understanding of pickup sounds closer to "recklessness".
I wasn't actually telling other people to adopt my rule, in fact it isn't even a rule. Other people might call it a part of the social contract. I'd consider it to be an overwhelmingly useful heuristic for getting along in society. One example of a pathalogical case does not overbalance the majority of cases where it holds true.
If you are only interested in the consequences for you and haven't figured out why it's sometimes good for you to behave according to the social contract, then that's your choice. But my choice is not to trust you or anybody like you... which is kind of the whole point of this argument.
The consequence for you is that other people watch your actions (or even just your words in this case) and no longer trust or respect you.
That has it's own further consequences down the line. If those further consequences later impinge upon your utility (eg help that you need but is not extended to you), then it would be worth considering adopting "my" rule.
That doesn't seem to be true either. To take an extreme example, being a compulsive liar who enjoys telling falsehoods for fun is one of the "dark triad" of male qualities that are exceptionally attractive for females. The reputational knock-on effects aren't enough to balance things out.
How can you be sure? You may well be noticing the successful compulsive liars (at least, the less subtle ones) and not noticing the guys who told one lie too many to the wrong people in their lives.
It is normally difficult enough to avoid selection bias, but there's the additional difficulty here that a disproportionate number of the unsuccessful ones are located in prison.
So this brings up one of the questions I wonder if PUAs can answer: do you have any kind of metric capable of telling whether something is attractive for "females" or for "the kind of females PUAs find easy targets"? It was obvious when I did my psychiatry rotation that the Cluster B personality disorder patients found themselves drawn to one another. Is the Dark Triad good for picking up women who aren't Cluster B, or primarily for picking up women who are? Or at least, are there tools available to actually answer that question?
Edit: this comment is in reply to wording that cousin_it has now removed from his comment. You can get the gist from the brief excerpt that I have quoted.
You are assuming that I'm trying to give you advice that benefits you?
Thats interesting - especially when you've made it clear that you don't bother to consider whether your actions benefit other people (in fact you choose to actively work against the benefit of other people). I think I made it pretty clear that, due to this behaviour, I neither respect you nor have any particular reason to help you. I was replying to your stated lack of understanding: "I don't understand why it should be adopted." in case you happened to have anything interesting to say about it.
I never thought that on balance you would choose to adopt the rule. :) I gave you the reasons why people do adopt this rule and let you choose for yourself if that applies to your circumstances.
I'm sure we can each find oh-so-convenient examples that match what we choose to believe. I also expect that one person being a defector will probably clean up pretty nicely in a society full of people that choose not to defect (on average).
On average, it looks like it works for people that I've met (male and female)... that's about all I can say. Why do you expect that for my advice to be good advice that it has to be 100% true for you as well as me?
Please reread the following paragraph from your own comment:
Cousin_it's reply made sense. Yours does not. The context makes it incoherent.
Weird... my comment above was a reply to a completely different comment of cousin_its
I can easily see why it looks incoherent.
I'm now going to go looking for the comment that I was actually replying to.
Edit: nope, looks like cousin_it has re-edited his original comment and removed that which I was actually replying to, so that my reply appears to be no longer relevant.
I am leaving my comment in place anyhow.
Oh - and I was giving advice that may or may not benefit people in general - not specifically for cousin_it's benefit. Thus why my reply is not entirely incoherent :)
I was mainly responding to his statement that "I don't understand why it should be adopted." by explaining why it's worth considering as an option - ie why other people adopt it.